The Metro “Performers”

Varying looks of disinterest punctuate my journey across town on a busy Thursday afternoon as Celine Dion (not my choice) filters down the metro carriage. The player of this rousing classic is a South American man, dressed entirely in black, holding his panpipes to his mouth as if they were giving him oxygen and not the other way around. He circles a few times, a tentative ballerina, before striding down the aisle, muttering please and thank you to a largely apathetic crowd. Interestingly, he is wearing a Metallica shirt, his nose is pierced twice, and he has a tattoo of a snake eating a buxom woman on his forearm.

However, giving credit where credit is due, he is not the strangest sight I have seen on the Madrid metro system. There are the two men, dressed as some bizarre cross between medieval maidens and gymnasts, who perform skits based on the people sitting around them. In a similar vein, there is also a rapping Cuban, accompanied by his friend on guitar, who invents little ditties about his fellow passengers. I fell victim to both of these tube theatricals, with more than a few comments made about the attention I was paying to my cellphone.

We all make comments and joke about the people we see on our daily journeys, especially those (irony intended) who are far more interested in their electronic devices than is really necessary. The endless beeps as you reach another level on Candy Crush, the chime of another message landing in your digital inbox and the incessant trilling of instant messengers are all regular background noise to the soundtrack of our everyday lives.

Yet, on the metro in Madrid, I frequently witness a curious phenomenon. Back in my home country of England, my city is not big enough to warrant a subterranean railway network but it does have a tram and I am yet to witness anything close to the spectacles I regularly see in Madrid. Even when travelling through London, I have rarely seen beggars, buskers and everything in between, except outside the train as you descend the depths to your platform.

Now, I am sure that the circus of performers that entertain us daily here in Madrid are not unique to this city. However, it is the city I know best, having been my home now for close to three years.

My job regularly entails me to travel from one side of the city to the other, on a variety of buses, trains and different colored metro lines connecting us all to the city as if it were an ancient, primeval ley line connecting us all to the earth. Beyond this, there is another thread that connects us all together, because here is where you can contemplate humanity in all its proudest and most humiliating forms.

A few weeks ago, I was traveling across the city to visit a student when an old man approached me at the ticket machines in the metro station. He was around eighty years old, dressed in the usual uniform of a Spanish señor, flat cap and corduroy trousers belted high around his stomach, and he was clearly distressed. He asked for fifty cents to make up the remainder of his fare, and I declined. I felt guilty the rest of the day, cursing my inability to carry any change. He could have been somebody’s grandfather. Yet, there was a cynical current that pulled underneath all of this, that offered the potential thought that this man could be a scammer. I couldn’t shake my guilt, until the same time the following week, when I saw him doing exactly the same thing to another group of passengers, all fumbling in their purses. I suppose you never really know who is asking and whatit is they are asking for.

The system of begging is rife throughout Madrid and indeed, most of Spain. Not a day goes by without someone approaching me for something. Charity collectors, gypsies selling herbs and fortunes, and the Metro Merchants are my most common run-ins. This is a real trade and grows more vociferous by the day; a motley crew of peoples selling tissues, water, sweets and other miscellany on the trains. They are all mostly unemployed, or so I assume, trying to make ends meet in the aftermath of one of the most serious recessions in Spanish history. Their reasons vary, but many seem to have the same background.  They lost their jobs -or the main breadwinner in their family lost theirs-, they have suffered debilitating illness, or, simply, they have fallen on hard times. Without straying into social politics, the benefits system in Spain is finite; it has an end date for each individual and if you have not made arrangements for your income after that, then you can run into serious trouble. Hence, the growing amount of vendors on the metro.

I have spoken to a couple of them, enquiring about their personal histories, and, on the surface, the results appear to be varied and many.  Some are there out of pure desperation; for example, one woman whose husband died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage and whose eldest child is in a wheelchair. The government severed her benefits after two years -the normal scope of time-, and now she sells sweets to tourists and commuters within the veins of the vast Madrid metro system. Another with whom I spoke lost his job at a private rental agency shortly after the economic downturn began and has not been able to find work since. He is sixty years old and expresses his fears that his time has passed.

Then, there are the chancers, holding cards of imaginary children in order to pique the sympathy of others. They are those who mimic disability or illness, and even religion in order to ask for money. Take the case of the women who cover their heads with a scarf, feigning a devotion to Islam, in order to entice money from Muslim tourists who are occasionally obligated to donate to charity as part of the pillars of their religion. There are also the gangs, which I’m sure remind many of the movie Slumdog Millionaire, who roam the train networks. There is a man I see regularly who is horribly burnt, his skin puckered and wrinkled, who works within a group of men who deliberately recruit disabled people to beg for them, and whose other business delves into casinos and strip clubs.

The city, in all its shades and colors, is here.

The same can be said for the myriad of buskers and performers that grace the stages of our own private theatres. There is talent and there is wishful thinking. My own personal favorite is a woman who sings Spanish wedding songs, to a rather out-of-sync playlist. I see her at least three times a week but I have yet to see her collect any money. I have seen retired opera singers, who now work on the trains, not out of desperation but out of sheer pleasure and joy to be sharing their skill with others. I have seen students who sing Pink Floyd and country bands that have inspired people to dance in the early hours of the morning as the metro reopens for the day.

They have never failed to bring a smile to my face. I suppose that is the point really. To shave off some of the edge of the day, if only to provide an eye roll of annoyance.
A smirk or a shrug as another paper cup filled with small change is pushed into your face.

But then, what better display of city life is there than to witness all the characters that live within it?

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Have any stories about interesting people or “performers” you’ve met while traveling abroad?  Tell us about it in the comments below!

[accordion_tab title=”Collegiate Correspondent: Claire Mapletoft” default]

Claire Mapletoft has been unable to deny her love of travel since she discovered that it is a crucial part of being a Sagittarius. This passion has been encouraged by her inescapable joy upon discovering new foods and wines of the world. Traveling became more than a dream when Claire was lucky enough to participate in a study abroad program in both France and Germany, which led her to ultimately study her teaching qualification in Prague. Claire has also lived and worked in both Spain and China, has been published in magazines such as Fringe and Edge, and was accepted to the prestigious Faber Academy. She is currently working on a novel inspired by her love of Asia and the travel experiences she witnessed there. Claire is a graduate of the university of Edinburgh where she holds a Master’s in 20th Century American Literature and a Bachelors in English Literature and History. She was born in Nottingham, England and forever a Midlands girl at heart.[/accordion_tab]